| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: appear, than you instantly commit your soul to his keeping. In the
evening, as you say, you hear of him, and in the morning you go to him,
never deliberating or taking the opinion of any one as to whether you ought
to intrust yourself to him or not;--you have quite made up your mind that
you will at all hazards be a pupil of Protagoras, and are prepared to
expend all the property of yourself and of your friends in carrying out at
any price this determination, although, as you admit, you do not know him,
and have never spoken with him: and you call him a Sophist, but are
manifestly ignorant of what a Sophist is; and yet you are going to commit
yourself to his keeping.
When he heard me say this, he replied: No other inference, Socrates, can
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: "His title is the Marquis of Lambeth," said Beaumont; and then he was silent.
Bessie Alden appeared to be looking at him with interest. "He is the son
of the Duke of Bayswater," he added presently.
"The eldest son?"
"The only son."
"And are his parents living?"
"Oh yes; if his father were not living he would be a duke."
"So that when his father dies," pursued Bessie Alden with more
simplicity than might have been expected in a clever girl,
"he will become Duke of Bayswater?"
"Of course," said Percy Beaumont. "But his father is in excellent health."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: trip, and every port was a Port Said. Eddie Houghton's thoughts
were not these men's thoughts; his actions were not their actions,
his practices were not their practices. To Eddie Houghton, a
Chinese woman in a sampan on the water front at Shanghai was
something picturesque; something about which to write home to his
mother and to Josie. To those other men she was possible prey.
Those other men saw that he was different, and they pestered
him. They ill-treated him when they could, and made his life a
hellish thing. Men do those things, and people do not speak of it.
I don't know all the things that he suffered. But in his mind, day
by day, grew the great, overwhelming desire to get away from it
Buttered Side Down |
